The Substack Social Experiment: What I Learned One Year & 10,000 Subscribers Later

I posted twice a week for a year straight. 10,000+ subscribers later, here is what I learned about writing, creativity, vulnerability and burnout.

Hi Coconuts! Coming to you with the last Friday Trend Report before I begin a break for summer and travels. I will be pausing the paid subscriptions so you will not be charged as long as I am not creating paid content ❤️

If I am charging you guys, I want to give it my all. And I know I won’t be able to do that while traveling Europe for work. I will be back in your inbox as soon as I am refreshed and able to give you what you pay for.

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The Substack Social Experiment:

When I started my Substack, I decided to look at it as a social experiment versus a new platform I had to master. I wanted to give myself grace to try new things, to make mistakes and to fail upwards. June marks a year since I began this new journey with my most die-hard coconuts on Substack.

This platform challenged me but also rewarded me in ways I could have never expected when I began. I thought I would be lucky if I got 1,000 subscribers. Instead, I was blown away at the 10,000+ subscribers I gained in my first year on this platform that felt like the wild west with no road map.

Here are 5 lessons I learned…

Lesson 1: Writing is a completely different muscle from short-form videos

I would love for a neurologist to weigh in here, but switching from a video only creator to also doing written posts for Substack — I realized that writing used such a different part of my brain than videos. The way I processed my thoughts, ideas and executed them felt foreign to how I had done it on TikTok for years.

On TikTok, I was so visual. I would have a green screen picture of a celebrity behind me then I would begin riffing on the top of my head about the marketing point I wanted to make.

But when I write, I have to be much more prepared and structured. Writing out your thoughts, versus speaking them, forces you to slow down. To really absorb what you are saying and due to it being long-form, you have to provide much more evidence to support your thought or theory. But on TikTok, you are almost penalized if your video is too long and you have to sacrifice information for the sake of brevity.

Writing on Substack made me a better researcher and podcaster. I began structuring my podcasts the way I would write my articles. It lended itself to more thoughtful episodes, with more evidence, where I didn’t speak in circles.

Short-form videos and long-form written posts both have their gives and takes. Short-form videos allow you to be more agile as a creator and make an experimental video about a topic in less than 10 minutes. But written, long-form forces you to slow down. You have to create the episode or written post, not because it is timely and trendy, but because it is something you are passionate about even if it doesn’t give you a quick, viral hit of dopamine.

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Lesson 2: A change of scenery is important for a change of perspective

Something that really helped reinvigorate me as a creator was the writing aspect on Substack. Up until this point, I had only gone viral doing videos. When filming videos, I almost always had to do it from the same spot in my bedroom due to lighting, sound and comfortability.

But with writing, I could do it anywhere. That was a blessing that came specifically from Substack that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

I wrote from the beach, I wrote from coffee shops, I wrote from friend’s houses, I wrote from bed. Anywhere I had a WiFi connection or my phone’s hot spot — I could write.

Whenever I felt like I was hitting a creative wall, I would go somewhere new to write that day. The change of scenery gave me a new wind in a way I was never afforded when creating for TikTok.

If you hate being on camera, Substack is the platform for you. It’s a slow burn but creators have built 6-figure annual incomes on here without ever showing their faces. The only medium you can comfortably change locations without having to predict a handful of variables like sound, microphones, lighting, location releases is writing.

I never thought I would be a writer but Substack’s writing platform helped me create some of, arguably, my best work this past year. Even better than my podcast and most viral TikToks.

Lesson 3: The cover photo is just as, if not more, important as the title and contents of the Substack article

When I have clicked on new Substack articles, it is almost always because the cover photo caught my eye. And if you scroll the Notes Feed, you might notice that almost every trending article has an eye-catching cover photo.

My most viral Substack article had a picture with Sabrina Carpenter on the cover.

I purposely tried to find a cover photo where the background was a bright, solid color that contrasted the subject (Sabrina Carpenter). In this case, it was the purple in contrast with the yellow. In fact, purple is opposite yellow on the color wheel. So the contrast catches your eye and attention.

And fun fact: when I used to post many green screen TikToks, I would try to choose a picture of a celebrity that had a bright, solid color behind them to catch your eye. Pinterest usually had good options but if I couldn’t find a good pic, I would edit one on Canva.

And speaking of Canva, the collage feature helped me the most when creating cover photos for my Substack. I pay for their yearly membership to use all their tools. If you want to elevate your Substack game, that is a great option to use.

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Lesson 4: Don’t add to the conversation unless you have something new to say

I would only write a Substack article or make a podcast episode about a trending topic if I felt I had something new to add—something that hadn’t already been said a dozen times by other creators. It sounds simple, but when you live in the trenches of media and marketing like I do, the temptation to jump on every hot topic is real. The algorithm rewards speed, not necessarily insight. But I didn’t want to add noise—I wanted to offer a new perspective.

What this challenge did was shift my entire creative process. It forced me to sit with a topic a little longer. To ask myself, “What am I actually saying that’s different? Is this perspective uniquely mine? Am I moving the conversation forward—or just riding its coattails?” At times, I probably left views and money on the table by deciding to not make a video at all about a topic because I felt I had nothing else to add that hadn’t been said already.

That pause has saved me from publishing work that felt rushed or hollow. Instead, I’ve been able to go deeper, connect more dots, and build trust with my audience by showing up with real value, not just relevance.

Lesson 5: You have to love the game even when it doesn’t love you

Like starting on any platform, you have to commit yourself to loving the game before it loves you. I probably posted on TikTok for 6 months before I had a “viral” video, so to speak.

The creators that truly “make it” and do this as a career are the ones who love creating so much. They love the game even when the game doesn’t always love them.

You have to be okay with feeling invisible 80% of the time. You have to be okay with showing up even when the platform hasn’t recognized you yet. You have to do it because you love it, not because it loves you.

And that is why it is so important when starting a new platform, like Substack, that you choose a topic or style that is authentic to you. You have to be willing to post even when it feels like no one is watching. If you are only chasing the trends, it will be even more salt in the wound when it feels like no one knows you exist anymore.

When I first started on Substack, I was excited to get 200 views on a post. I imagined it was a college lecture hall. If 200 people showed up to watch you speak, that would be a full room. You might even get nervous and your palms sweaty from the pressure. So look at your social media the same way. Love it whether 20 people or watching or 2 million.

Do it because you love it. ❤️

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Thank you for a great, first year coconuts 🥥

If you want to see what I am doing this summer, follow along on my Instagram: @cocomocoe